The Curse Keepers Collection (15 page)

Her mouth lifted into a grim smile. “I told you that he was upset yesterday. He thought you were a little girl and said he couldn’t find you so I told him that I’d hidden you somewhere the spirits couldn’t reach you. But he said it wasn’t enough, and he wrote down several symbols that he said I needed to put outside your door.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and sat up straighter. “Do you still have the paper?”

“Well, yeah, but . . . ”

“Could I have it?”

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why?”

Obviously, I couldn’t tell her the truth. “If Daddy gets upset again, maybe I could write one or two down to convince him that I’m not an evil spirit.”

Myra considered what I said for a moment before nodding. “That might actually be a good idea.” She got up and opened a drawer in the small antique desk in the corner. After she pulled out a folded piece of paper, she handed it to me. “Here. Just be careful with it. I don’t want to encourage his delusions.”

I took the paper and clutched it in my hand. “I’ll be careful.”

“You go home. If you stay . . . your dad . . . ”

I stood and wiped my face again, fighting back more tears. I couldn’t bear the thought that my presence upset him. “I know.”

“He loves you, Ellie. Deep inside, in the part of him that’s trapped, he loves you. That’s why he’s so frantic to save the little girl you.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and headed for the door. As I passed the dining room, a pair of antique silver candlesticks on the buffet in front of the window caught my eye. How much were they worth? Probably a lot. They’d been in our family for years, most likely centuries. I closed my eyes and shook my head. What was I thinking?

Did I really have a choice?

With a grieving heart, I stuffed the two pieces into my bag and headed out the door. Myra was bound to notice them missing. What would I tell her? I wanted to cry all over again, but crying only made me weak, and I had to be strong. Evil lurked around me and somehow I knew it would feed off my weakness. I had to be strong, and I had to pretend to be brave even if I didn’t feel brave.

Collin’s truck was parked outside my apartment building when I got home. I peered in the rolled-down windows; he wasn’t in the cab. I wasn’t surprised to see him sitting in the chair on my front porch, but I
was
surprised to see him with two cups of coffee from the coffee shop on the other side of the alley. He stood and handed me one. “I took you for a skinny caramel macchiato girl.”

“How did you know that?” I unlocked the door, then took the cup from him, narrowing my eyes with suspicion. Why was he being so nice?

“You can tell a lot about a person from the coffee they drink. Caramel means you aren’t serious about your coffee drinking. The macchiato part makes you feel sophisticated. And the nonfat goes without saying.”

Was he insinuating that I was fat? “There’s no way you could possibly know what I drink.”

He grinned, a real grin, not the smartass one he mostly used. “I asked Tiffany at the coffee shop across the alley what you usually get.”

“
And she told you
? You could have been a stalker!” I opened the door and went inside, but Collin stayed on the porch.

He shrugged. “I have a way with women.”

Talk about an understatement.

He pointed to the symbols on the ground and all around my door. “Did they work?”

“The door worked just fine.”

He waved toward my bedroom. “What happened to your window?”

“A bird flew into it.”

His eyes widened in surprise. “A bird? Anything else?”

Something about the way he asked made me uneasy. Like he’d expected me to have trouble last night. I cocked an eyebrow. “Did anything happen to
you
last night?”

He remained expressionless. “Nope. I had an uneventful evening eating a frozen pizza and watching mindless TV.”

He was lying to me. I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but I did. Perhaps it was the Keeper link, but no matter how I knew, the fact that he was lying set me on edge. His warning when we were in Rodanthe, that he’d do anything to get what he wanted, remained fresh in my memory.

“What happened after the bird flew in the window?”

I should have told him, but some instinct told me to keep it to myself. And at the moment, instinct was all I had to go on. “Did you expect something to happen?”

He took a deep breath and glanced around the doorway. “Did you stay here last night?”

Now I was really suspicious. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s pretty early, and you’ve already been out and are now getting home. Before eight o’clock.”

I took a sip of my coffee. “I just got home from my second job.”

“You have two jobs, but you still had to pawn your relic? How many pairs of shoes do you own?”

Let Collin Dailey think whatever he liked as long as he didn’t know about Daddy. “Are we going to Rodanthe or not?”

“Did you get some money?”

“How was I supposed to get money when I was locked in my apartment all night?”

“So you didn’t?”

“Not exactly.” I didn’t want him to know I’d just gotten the candlesticks or he’d ask me where they came from. I wasn’t sure why I felt a desperate fear that he’d discover Daddy, but it was more instinct. I’d been basing a lot of decisions off of instinct over the last twenty-four-plus hours. I didn’t see any reason to change now.

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?” He still stood on my porch. Why hadn’t he come in?

I carried my backpack into my bedroom, leaving the door open. “It means I realized I had something else to take to the pawnshop.”

I found another bag in my closet and transferred the candlesticks. Just as I was getting ready to head back into the living room I remembered the paper in the pocket of my skirt. I pulled it out and unfolded the note. Several Native American symbols covered the page, written in shaky handwriting. I studied them closely, trying to commit them to memory so I could compare them to what Collin had written outside my door. I stuffed the paper in my purse and left my bedroom. Collin was still outside the door.

“What do you have to pawn?” he asked as soon as he saw me.

“Silver candlesticks.” I handed him the bag, pretending like they didn’t matter. I had to forget the stupid things, because I’d never see them again. If I was lucky enough to get a thousand dollars for them, I’d never have the money to buy them back.

Collin opened the bag and pulled one out. He released a low whistle. “You’re telling me that you sold your little pewter cup before you departed with these?” Disbelief dripped from his words.

“Correction: I didn’t
sell
my cup. I
pawned
it. I meant to buy it back just like all the other times.”

“
All the other times
?”

I stepped out of my apartment, setting my coffee on the railing of the porch so I could lock up again. I paused to take in the marks around my door. I immediately recognized at least three of them from the paper. “What are these things?”

“Protection symbols.”

“They keep out the evil spirits?”

“Not just the evil ones. The good ones too.”

I shot him a questioning look. “Good ones?”

“Not all spirits are evil. There are good ones, just like people. And sometimes people—and spirits—are a mixture of both.”

While Ahone’s messenger had appeared unthreatening, Okeus’s certainly didn’t. I decided if I encountered any more spirits before closing the gate, I was assuming the worst about them.

I held out my palm and showed him my mark. “And this?”

“The Curse Keeper symbol. The circle represents the spirit world. The square represents our world. They are neither inside nor outside one another, but coexist.”

“You have one too? What does yours look like?”

He held out his hand, palm up. I grabbed it and pulled it closer. It looked identical to mine.

“If you wanted to hold my hand, you only had to ask.”

I rolled my eyes. “As if.” I placed my open palm next to his. “They’re the same.”

“Of course. It’s the mark of the Curse Keeper. Since we’re both Keepers . . . ” His voice trailed off.

I looked up into his face and winked. “And here I thought your mark would be better since you’re so superior to me.”

To my surprise, Collin laughed. “Obviously, I didn’t have a say in the matter.”

“My mark appeared when you grabbed my hand in the restaurant.” My eyes widened and I whispered. “You knew. You did this.”

Disbelief and worry replaced his amusement. “No. When I came to the restaurant I didn’t know, but when I couldn’t breathe, I began to suspect. It was just like my grandmother always told me it would happen. And when you were so close, it was as though I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing your hand. As though you were a magnet, drawing my hand to yours. I told you already. I couldn’t have stopped it if I wanted to.”

“But that’s what broke the curse.”

A softness I’d never seen before filled his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

I leaned my back into the door. “What’s done is done.”

He watched me, waiting.

“My mark tingles or burns when something is near.”

His eyes hardened. “When were you near a spirit?”

Oh shit. I needed more sleep. I sucked at keeping secrets when I was tired. “Yesterday at the house in Rodanthe. When you touched me, it tingled then. But even before that. When I looked into the ocean while I was standing next to you. I felt it then.”

Collin’s shoulders relaxed. “When I said we were like magnets, I meant it. The power in our blood is strong, but it’s stronger when the two of us are together, and even more so when our marks touch. We’re naturally drawn to each other.” He moved closer and lowered his voice with a wink. “Thank God you’re not an eighty-two-year-old woman.”

“What if I were an eighty-two-year-old man?”

“Even worse.”

“So . . . ” I found it difficult to think with him so close. “You’re saying that what I feel right now is because of the curse, the power or magic in our blood?”

“It depends. What are you feeling right now?” He turned his hooded eyes on me, giving me a come-hither stare.

I swallowed. “An electrical charge. Why? What are you feeling?”

A sly grin spread across his face. “An electrical charge.”

I couldn’t get caught in Collin’s seductive trap. I knew he had a way with women and maybe he thought I’d be more cooperative if he put me under his sexy spell. Or maybe he didn’t have a goal. Maybe he couldn’t help himself. “Then I guess we’ll come in handy if there’s a power outage.” I gave his chest a small shove. “Let’s go.”

Collin laughed while I tromped down the stairs. “It’s going to be an interesting day.”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

Our truce ended less than a minute later when I told Collin I wanted to sell my candlesticks to Oscar.

“I am not driving back to Kill Devil Hills,” Collin growled, standing in front of his truck.

“I’m not selling them to someone else. I trust Oscar. So if you don’t want to waste your gas, I’ll drive my own car!”

He dangled the bag in the air over his head, wearing an evil smile. “Seeing how I have the bag, I get to decide where we go.”

I reached for it, but Collin held the pack higher, out of my reach.

“Really?” I asked. “What? Are you a twelve-year-old boy now?”

He laughed. “I think all men are really twelve-year-old boys deep down inside.”

“I’m serious, Collin. They’re mine. Give them back.”

He watched me for a moment, then handed me the bag, but he didn’t release his grasp. “Ellie, do you plan to pawn these or sell them?”

I wasn’t sure why he cared, but his face had softened again. It was as though his façade had dropped, and he let me see the real him for a moment.

God, I’m a pushover
. “Sell them.” I looked away. “I’ll never be able to buy them back.”

Collin’s voice lowered with a tenderness I didn’t expect. “You can pawn them for ninety days, Ellie. Then you get sixty more to pay them off. That’s five months.”

I looked into his face, shaking my head. “Can you imagine the interest? Oscar charges twenty-two percent. I’ll never come up with the money to pay it off.” I shoved them back at him, ordering the tears in my eyes to dry up as I walked around to the truck’s passenger door.